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The Narrator of The Mill on the FlossMARGARET HARRIS

While some of the contemporary reviewers of The Mill on theFloss praised the skill and vigour of the manner in which thetale was told, there were objections:

Her clear, racy, nervous English, heightened by gleams of quiethumour and thrills of calm pathos, lends rather a perilous charm topassages teeming with the worst luxuriance of that petty realismwhich passes with careless critics for art of the first order. Eventhese are less intolerable than those other passages of labouredirony and didactic commonplace, which read like bits of privatenotebooks foisted into their present places. 0 0 0 Her interjectionalremarks are seldom very wise or very pertinent. In nine cases outof ten they only interrupt the story, without offering a fair sop tothe reader's impatience.... With the peevish fretfulness of a camelin the act of loading, our authoress keeps groaning out her tiresometirades against evils for the most part of her own imagining.l

Less cruelly put, the same kind of complaint about the obtrusive-ness of the narrator in much nineteenth-century fiction continuedfor a century until the critical rehabilitation of the onmiscientauthor convention began with such studies as Kathleen Tillotson'sThe Tale and the Teller (1959), W. J. Harvey's The Art ofGeorge Eliot (1961), and Wayne C. Booth's The Rhetoric ofFiction (1961). An essay like Isobel Armstrong's "Middlemarch:A Note on George Eliot's 'Wisdom'''2 can be taken as clearrefutation of the charges of the Dublin University Magazinereviewer. Mrs Armstrong shows not only the skill with whichGeorge Eliot develops and deploys the kind of discursive gene-ralization which is so central to her narrative method, but alsoshows that the "sayings" are an integral means of her achievingher avowed aims in art. These aims, broadly, were that a workof art could and should present the full complexity of life, andhence extend life experience, and were expounded not only inessays and letters but throughout the novels as well. Becauseart can be a means to the moral end of developing greatersympathy for others, the interrelation of ethic and aesthetic figuresprominently in George Eliot's work, and is frequently formulatedby the narrator. And, throughout the novels, as Isobel Armstrong

1 Dublin University Magazine (February 1861), repro in George Eliot:The Critical Heritage, ed. David Carroll (1971), p. 152.

2 Critical Essays on George Eliot, ed. Barbara Hardy (1970), pp. 116-32.

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shows of Middlemarch, detailed attention to the utterances ofthe author as chorus to her own novel yields amplified under-standing of the complexity of the art and the life it presents.

Such an analysis of Middlemarch has evident application toThe Mill on the Floss as well, but there is I think point insingling out the narrator of The Mill, to examine this presencein the novel. More particularly, I mean to look at the waysand extent to which the narrator is characterized in the novel,suggesting that the narrator projects George Eliot's intellectualidentification with the problems of heredity and environment,of a generation's relating to its ancestors and to its contemporarysociety; and that in The Mill at least the question of posterityis not able to be framed. Part of what is implied by this emphasison the narrator is some retraction of the orthodoxy that theauthorial "I" in novels such as Vanity Fair and Middlemarchis not to identified with a biographical Thackeray or GeorgeEliot. In the case of The Mill on the Floss, which has so fre-quently been discussed in terms of the distorting pressure ofGeorge Eliot's neuroses about father, brother and ugly-ducklingself in the presentation of Maggie, it may be useful to indicateanother way in which the author projects herself in her work.

It has often been commented that George Eliot in The Millon the Floss can see no way forward for Maggie Tulliver. Oneof the things which I think emerges from a detailed considerationof the narrator's utterances is the extent to which she neverintended to do so. What George Eliot is concerned to expoundis the unperceived tragic situation in the St Ogg's world, notways in which the tragedy may be redeemed. Perception of thetragedy has a kind of redemptive effect for the reader, but hardlyfor the protagonist. In this sense, the novel is about the limi-tations of resignation and renunciation, but perhaps there is ablockage about pressing the issue of how those limits might betranscended which is due to more than the intellectual paralysisengendered by the claustrophobic world of St Ogg's. My sug-gestion is that while George Eliot does resolve and place herprojection of personal, emotional dilemmas in Maggie (a con-tention which I do 110t propose to argue3), there is much lessresolution in the projection in the narrator of the dilemmas of

3 For a penetrating discussion of this issue - a discussion which amongother things exposes the baldness of my assertion - see BarbaraHardy, "The Mill on the Floss" in Critical Essays on George Eliot,pp.42-58.

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how change can be effected and how such change is to bedocumented.

It is, then, to the explicit appearances of the narrator in thenarrative that I am looking.4 I am not proposing a comprehensiveexamination of the form and functions of the narrator, and this ob-viously ignores significant aspects of the narrator's role in the novel.For instance, the ways in which the thoughts and perceptions ofthe characters are projected are particularly interesting since thesensibilities of many of the characters are so limited, by thechild's lack of experience in the early sequences on Maggie, andTom; by stupidity, in Mrs Tulliver; by pride, in Mr Tulliver;by romantic distortion, in the adolescent Maggie and PhilipWakem. Such limitations are not evident in the narrator, whoif not quite "all-knowing", comprehends more than any of theother characters and makes allowances as well as connections.

The first point to be made is that the narrator of The Millis to a degree characterized in the novel, and has special attributesin the choric role because of the extent of this delineation. Thispersonification is not perhaps as explicit as that of the narratorof "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton", the firstof George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life (1858), who in hisrecollections of Shepperton Church and the Rev. Amos Bartontwenty-five years ago, refers to himself as "so crude a memberof the congregation that my nurse found it necessary to providefor the reinforcement of my devotional patience by smugglingbread-and-butter into the sacred edifice."5 However, the claimthat the narrator as a boy heard Amos preach serves mainlyas a conventional token establishing some authority in the narrator

4 W. J. Harvey, in The Art of George Eliot (1961) pp. 87-8, has aparagraph on the narrator of The Mill, to the effect that "theextended intrusion of the author in the opening chapters, the con-f1ation of her past and present selves . . . creates a more intimateand personal tone than anything else in her work". In George Eliot'sEarly Novels: The Limits of Realism (1968), pp. 178-93 passim,U. C. Knoepflmacher offers a fuller discussion of the role of thenarrator. He takes the view that in The Mill, George Eliot unabash-edly presents herself with "the voice of that Victorian sage whowas to speak with far greater assurance in Middlemarch ... a sageeager to influence her own age" (p. 184). It would be petty toquibble with this, though it seems to me that Knoepflmacher layssome of his emphases with his overall argument in mind, so thatsome discriminations between author and narrator elude him.

5 Scenes of Clerical Life (1858; Penguin edn. 1973). p. 42. Allsubsequent references are to this edition.

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by virtue of this childhood acquaintance; and the whimsy ofthe bread-and-butter episode continues through the early stagesof the story in arch addresses to the reader - "Reader! didyou ever taste such a cup of tea ..." (p. 45), "It was happy forthe Rev. Amos Barton that he did not, like us, overhear theconversation recorded in the last chapter ..." (p. 51). Thereare, of course, early versions of authorial wisdom: the sentencejust quoted leads into a long passage providing variations onthe theme of "seeing ourselves as others see us". The verylength of the passage is an indication of George Eliot's feelingher way: the telling expansion from the particular case underdiscussion to the incriminating generalization comes later. Here,the reasons for contemporary readers thinking Scenes to havebeen written by a clergyman are very evident. However, theprincipal qualities of the narrator of "Amos Barton" are sharedby all George Eliot's subsequent narrators: broadly, these aretolerance and compassion, urged, for instance, in the variouswarnings about making wrong judgements of the Countess andother characters, or in the set-piece opening of chapter v, on"the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, lyingin the experience of a human soul that looks out through dullgrey eyes" (p. 81).

The narrator of The Mill stands in something of the samerelation to the narrative as does the narrator of "Amos Barton":events which occurred some time in the past are being recountedby someone who had some involvement with the protagonistsand their environment. This relation of past and present, thepast in whieh the Tullivers' tragedy is enacted, and the presentin which that tragedy is being described, is one of the mainconcerns of the "I" in The Mill. In "Amos Barton", there isa comment on change between the past and the present, inthe narrator's regretting the refurbishing of the quaint old Shep-perton church to shining symmetry, and the disappearance ofthe old ways of hymn-singing and so on. But the commentgoes no further than pointing to the change, where in The Millquestions of cause and effect, and of the various emotionsengendered by the passage of time, loom large. And I think itis important that such concerns should be seen to be the narrator'sspecifically, and not merely themes which emerge in a diffusedway from the narrative.

To turn, then, to the beginning of the novel. It opens witha bald stage direction - "A wide plain ..." - a scene soon

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animated to anthropomorphized motion: "A wide plain, wherethe broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks tothe sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passagewith an impetuous embrace."6 The attribution of motive andemotion to the waters, mainly in the participles broadening,loving, rushing, blurs the fact that the active verbs (in a sentencelacking a principal clause) are hurries and checks. Movementand resistance are evident in the natural world, and also - asthe novel will show - in the world of human action. For themoment, though, the tide moves purposefully, carrying shipsto St Ogg's. The cargoes, precisely and evocatively enumerated,"the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearingseed, or with the dark glitter of coal", are for the world ofcommerce and technology, man's imposition on the natural scene.So amicable is the relation of nature and man-made things,however, that the ships and trees seem almost to intermingle;similarly, the town of St Ogg's is incorporated between hill andmeadows. The season, of winter yielding to spring, seems toassert the benign dominance of nature's cycles over man's energiesin sowing and reaping; and the very present tense in which thiswhole description is couched reinforces such a sense of time-lessness.

The beginning of specifying a point in time comes with theentry of the Ripple into the Floss, and of a human perceiverinto the scene:

How lovely the little river is, with its dark, changing wavelets! Itseems to me like a living companion while 1 wander along the bankand listen to its low placid voice, as to the voice of one who isdeaf and loving. 1 remember those large dipping willows. 1 rememberthe stone bridge. (I, 2.)

"I remember" fully introduces relative times into the situation:what is not clear yet is the relation of the "now" when the "I"remembers to the time being remembered, when the willowsand the bridge and the mill were familiar. Indeed, in the context,"I remember" functions almost as an invocation to conjure upthe particular scene of past time, of the mill, which is thenanimated as the sound of the mill-wheel cuts out the worldbeyond, and the grain-filled waggon is hauled along. There isexclamation at the horses, exclamation which is almost exhor-

6 The Mill on the Floss (3 1:'_'ls. 1860), I. 1. Subsequent page-referenceswill be to this edition, and incorporated in the text. Book andchapter references will also be given.

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tation to join in the gaze: "the strong, submissive, meek-eyedbeasts, who, I fancy, are looking mild reproach at him frombetween their blinkers . . . See how they stretch their shouldersup the slope ... Look at their grand shaggy feet ..." (I, 3-4).We may recur to that "I fancy" when its force not merely aswhimsy about the horses' feelings emerges, after the narratorpasses from the horses to the little girl and the dog, and becomesinvolved in a reverie about her situation and feelings. For itis only now that the nature of this whole reverie is revealed;and I think it is a testimony to the conviction with which thescene has been laid and animated that the reader feels a shock- perhaps of betrayal or at least anti-climax - with the turnfrom the second last to the last paragraph:

It is time, too, for me to leave off resting my arms on the coldstone of this bridge. . . .

Ah, my arms are really benumbed. I have been pressing myelbows on the arms of my chair, and dreaming that I was standingon the bridge in front of Dorlcote Mill, as it looked one Februaryafternoon many years ago. Before I dozed off, I was going to tellyou what Mr and Mrs Tulliver were talking about, as they sat bythe bright fire in the left-hand parlour on that very afternoon I havebeen dreaming of. (I, 4-5.)

The shock is generated mainly by the bluntness with which thedeception engendered by the blurring of timescales in the presenttense is exposed. Momentarily, the sense of being caught by anold convention prevails - but only momentarily, for the narratorgets us into the thick of the conversation in the left-hand parlourand the narrative proper gets under way.

Knoepflmaeher rightly points to the Wordsworthian elementsof chapter i of The Mill on the Floss: he interprets the narratoras, like Wordsworth's ideal poet, seeking to present emotionrecollected in tranquillity, fusing thought and feeling, mergingpast and present.7 There are, however, other Wordsworthianthemes, less explicitly enunciated here, but taken up elsewherein the novel: the formative capacities of early experience-particularly the potency of the childhood home; the power ofmemory; and the healing force of nature.

But there is another obvious literary analogy, with the dreamvision. Conventionally, in such works as Piers Plowman, orChaucer's The Book of the Duchess and The House of Fame,or The Divine Comedy, the dreamer-narrator falls asleep, and

7 George Eliot's Early Novels, p. 188.

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dreams the events described in the work, experiences whichare often partly allegorical. Frequently the allegory deals witha notion of an ideal state, and frequently it has Christian impli-cations. Bunyan used the convention in The Pilgrim's Progress,which clearly reverberates in Maggie's spiritual odyssey; and thirtyyears after The Mill on the Floss, William Morris more thoroughlyrevived the convention in News from Nmvhere - appropriately,given the espousal of a form of medievalism in that novel, andits aim of devising a secular Utopia. Of course The Mill isnot a vision in the way Piers Plowman is, though like Langland'spoem it is concerned with the disparity between an illusoryand elusive ideal, and the constraints of the real; and it ispertinent I think to see George Eliot's use of the dream-visionas part of her trying to formulate her "religion of humanity"just as the medieval writers provided their own gloss on Christianteachings. Rather, the dream which opens The Mill is a dreamof recollection. Freedom from restraint on consciousness in thisdream leads not to prescription or prediction, nor to the fantasyor allegory of "Kubla Khan", but to a kind of personal historywhich contrasts with the sorts of history - hagiography, chron-icle, social - mentioned later as interests of the narrator (BookFirst, chapter xii).

The "Conclusion" to the novel returns to the vista of theFloss, but does not invoke the characteristic awakening of thedreamer imbued with enlarged understanding. In any case it isnot clear how the "now" of the "Conclusion" relates to the"now" of the opening, though again the passage of time, andits effects, are under discussion:

Nature repairs her ravages - repairs them with her sunshine, andwith human labour. The desolation wrought by that flood, had leftlittle visible trace on the face of the earth, five years after. The fifthautumn was rich in golden corn-stacks, rising in thick clustersamong the distant hedgerows; the wharves and warehouses on theFloss were busy again, with echoes of eager voices, with hopefullading and unlading.

And every man and woman mentioned in this history was stillliving - except those whose end we know.

Nature repairs her ravages - but not all. The uptorn trees arenot rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred: if there is anew growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hillsunderneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending.To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.(III, 312.)

What the passage is doing is describing the restoration of theharmony of man and nature which had been depicted in the

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opening chapter, though perhaps the note, as in the churchyard,is too much of regaining "grassy order and decent quiet" (III,313). While we are told that there are some ravages which arebeyond redemption, it is implied that incomplete repair is moreevident in human lives than the natural scene, and in any casecan only be discerned by "the eyes that have dwelt on thepast" (III, 312). Those eyes are perhaps a little blurry, on theevidence of the end of the preceding chapter (Book Seventh,chapter v):

The boat reappeared - but brother and sister had gone down in anembrace never to be parted: living through again in one suprememoment, the days when they had clasped their little hands in love,and roamed the daisied fields together. (III, 311.)

We may be moved by the "clasped their little hands in love ...",but the novel did not show this kind of activity as characterizingthe childhood of the Tullivers, and it is difficult to see how thepassage can be placed as presenting Maggie's sentimentalizingspecifically.

Such considerations apart, certainly the "Conclusion" modifiesthe basically calm nostalgic note of the opening where there isno inkling of lament of the kind which pervades the "Conclusion".It is clear that there is a difference between the idea of a pasttime which can be recollected and recreated, with the emotionalimplication of wishing to re-engage with that time; and the ideaof those aspects of the past which cannot be repaired or recon-stituted. While the difference does not constitute a discrepancy,it does perhaps indicate an evasion, an evasion of the conside-ration of the problems of change and the passage of time whichthe narrator enunciates as an integral part of his interpretationof the history of the Dodsons and the Tullivers.

While the opening does provide the landscape vignette, thebrief preparatory glimpse of the child Maggie on her homeground, and an intimation of the themes of time, memory andhistory, it does not I think have the assurance and complexityof the openings of other of George Eliot's novels. It seems tome that George Eliot has another go, much more fruitfully, ata similar task of devising an overture in the "Introduction" toFelix Holt, where the rather awkward use of the dream in TheMill yields to a fuller counterpointing of past and present in thecommentary on the coach traversing the countryside. She pro-poses variations on the theme in the "Proem" to Romola withthe angel of the dawn and a Shade of a fifteenth-century Florentine

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musing on the processes of history, and by the "Prelude" toMiddlemarch she has worked the problem to a succinct formu-lation:

Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how themysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time,has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa ... ?'

One of the things that has happened between The Mill on theFloss and Middlemarch is that the focus has shifted. Theproblems of the individual's relation to her past are still central,but the predominant concerns are with the effect of the past indetermining present and future action. The historian in The Millis mainly looking backward: the time structure of Middlemarchis not so sealed off.

The Mill on the Floss does include some quite explicit con-sideration of the role of the historian, as part of the delineationof the narrator. I have in mind Book First, chapter xii, wherethe narrator makes a more particular appearance than at theopening. The occasion for presenting "Mr and Mrs Glegg atHome" is to get their - and especially her - reaction afterMr Tulliver's rash decision to pay back her loan of five hundredpounds. It also is an occasion for the narrator to dilate about8t Ogg'S:

In order to see Mr and Mrs Glegg at home, we must enter thetown of St Ogg's - that venerable town with the red-fluted roofsand the broad ware-house gables, where the black ships unladethemselves of their burthens from the far north, and carry away,in exchange, the precious inland products, the well-crushed cheeseand the soft fleeces, which my refined readers have doubtless becomeacquainted with through the medium of the best classic pastorals.(I, 215.)

The sarcasm of the reference to "refined readers" and "the bestclassic pastorals" is rare in this novel, and sits lightly and aptlyat the outset of a section which heavily qualifies stereotypes ofrustic innocence and simplicity, and challenges the reader's dis-tancing of himself from the people described.

The narrator presents himself as one well acquainted withthe actual town of 8t Ogg's, but also devoted to its history, bothas a local antiquarian (the reference to manuscript accounts ofthe exploits of 8t Ogg-I, 217) and as a chronicler of its historyfrom Roman times to the present. This history relates manyvicissitudes, of battles and of floods, which contrast with theillusion of stability subscribed to by Mrs Glegg's contemporaries:

8 Middlemurch (1871-2; Penguin edn. 1965), p. 25.

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Ah, even Mrs Glegg's day seems far back in the past now, separatedfrom us by changes that widen the years. War and the rumour ofwar had then died out from the minds of men, and if they wereever thought of by the farmers in drab greatcoats, who shook thegrain out of their sample-bags and buzzed over it in the full market-place, it was as a state of things that belonged to a past goldenage, when prices were high. . . . The Catholics, bad harvests, andthe mysterious fluctuations of trade, were the three evils mankindhad to fear: even the floods had not been great of late years. Themind of St Ogg's did not look extensively before or after. Itinherited a long past without thinking of it, and had no eyes forthe spirits that walked the streets. . . . And the present time waslike the level plain where men lose their belief in volcanoes andearthquakes, thinking to-morrow will be as yesterday, and the giantforces that used to shake the earth are for ever laid to sleep. (I,220-1.)

Potential for all kinds of upheaval is latent in St Ogg's, a placewhere confidence is often the product of wilful ignorance. Theeffect of the passage is complex, questioning the way that traditionand historical record reflect the past, reflecting too on the waythe present is interpreted by those experiencing it. In the pre-cision of the description of the farmers sampling grain, the viewof war as a feature of "a past golden age, when prices were high"does not obtrude itself as a materialistic modification of a pastoralideal- though such a modification is certainly part of the import.Similarly, the recurrence of certain kinds of situation in variousepochs is implied: for instance, the narrator suggests the divi-siveness of religious conflicts was still in the 1820s and 1830sas real as during the struggles of Puritan and Cavalier, thoughmore overtly expressed in terms of property and position.

And so the summing up:This was the general aspect of things at St Ogg's in Mrs Glegg's

day, and at that particular period in her family history when shehad had her quarrel with Mr Tulliver. It was a time when ignorancewas much more comfortable than at present, and was received withalI the honours in very good society, without being obliged to dressitself in an elaborate costume of knowledge; a time when cheapperiodicals were not, and when country surgeons never thought ofasking their female patients if they were fond of reading, but simplytook it for granted that they preferred gossip; a time when ladiesin rich silk-gowns wore large pockets, in which they carried amutton-bone to secure them against cramp. Mrs Glegg carried sucha bone, which she had inherited from her grandmother with abrocaded gown that would stand up empty, like a suit of armour,and a silver-headed walking-stick; for the Dodson family had beenrespectable for many generations. (I, 222-3.)

The end of the paragraph launches several astringent jibes-at the whole concept of respectability as defined in the Dodson

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world, and at the basis of that "respectability" in various kindsof superstition. But the remark about "ignorance was much morecomfortable than at present" perhaps carries a vestige of hopethat improvement can occur, while not permitting complacencyabout the likelihood of breeding out such superstitions over time.One of the lessons of history - perhaps the main one? - is therecognition of continuities in man and nature.

Another clear implication of the whole section is that theassimilation of change by the physiognomy of St Ogg's - repre-sented by "that fine old hall, which is like the town, telling ofthe thoughts and hands of widely-sundered generations" (I, 216)- must partly derive from the insensitivity of prejudice. Theorganic harmony of town with natural landscape must dependon suppression of discords. Similarly, a consensus about thedetails of the life of St Ogg, and about interpretation of thelegend in terms of divine grace, must involve selection and sup-pression (very likely there is a Darwinian note in George Eliot'sdiscourse here). The narrator elsewhere (Book Fourth, chapteri) makes a strong stand as to the best way of seeing any singlething, namely by recognizing it as the product of "a vast sumof conditions" (II, 151), and here a few of the elements of thesum are indicated, as well as the difficulty of eliciting the elementsand bringing them into relation.

Altogether, this section advances the exploration begun inBook First, chapter i, of the connection between past and presentas experienced by individuals and variously recorded. Discussionof these matters is resumed at length in Book Fourth, chapteri, "A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet". Herethe narrator steps right out of the oppressive world of St Ogg'sand surveys that oppressiveness in a densely-textured reflection.These pages form one of George Eliot's most telling essays ona theme she develops over and over again, that of the respon-sibility of the person and of the artist; and from them a coupleof paragraphs are inevitably quoted:

It is a sordid life, you say, this of the Tullivers and Dodsons-irradiated by no sublime principles, no romantic visions, no active,self-renouncing faith - moved by none of those wild, uncontrollablepassions which create the dark shadows of misery and crime-without that primitive rough simplicity of wants, that hard submissiveill-paid toil, that child-like spelling-out of what nature has written,which gives its poetry to peasant life. Here, one has conventionalworldly notions and habits without instruction and without polish-surely the most prosaic form of human life: proud respectabilityin a gig of unfashionable build: worldliness without side-dishes.

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Observing these people narrowly, even when the iron hand ofmisfortune has shaken them from their unquestioning hold on theworld, one sees little trace of religion, still less of a distinctivelyChristian creed. Their belief in the Unseen, so far as it manifestsitself at all, seems to be rather of a pagan kind; their moral notions,though held with strong tenacity, seem to have no standard beyondhereditary custom. You could not live among such people; youare stifled for want of an outlet towards something beautiful, great,or noble; you are irritated with these dull men and women, as akind of population out of keeping with the earth on which theylive - with this rich plain where the great river flows for everonward, and links the small pulse of the old English town withthe beatings of the world's mighty heart. A vigorous superstition,that lashes its gods or lashes its own back, seems to be morecongruous with the mystery of the human lot, than the mentalcondition of these emmet-like Dodsons and Tullivers.

I share with you this sense of oppressive narrowness; but it isnecessary that we should feel it, if we care to understand how itacted on the lives of Tom and Maggie - how it has acted onyoung natures in many generations, that in the onward tendencyof human things have risen above the mental level of the generationbefore them, to which they have been nevertheless tied by thestrongest fibres of their hearts. The suffering, whether of martyror victim, which belongs to every historical advance of mankind,is represented in this way in every town, and by hundreds of obscurehearths; and we need not shrink from this comparison of smallthings with great; for does not science tell us that its higheststriving is after the ascertainment of a unity which shall bind thesmallest things with the greatest? In natural science, I have under-stood, there is nothing petty to the mind that has a large visionof relations, and to which every single object suggests a vast sumof conditions. It is surely the same with the observation of humanlife. (II, 149-51.)

In the second of these paragraphs, I think George Eliot betraysthe self-imposed limits of her consideration of her themes, andin some ways claims more than the novel substantiates. Certainlyshe gives the contrasting reactions to "oppressive narrowness" ofTom and Maggie, and certainly the novel gives warrant for seeingthese reactions as symptomatic or even representative of a naturalevolution. But the argument about how the brother and sisterare representative is truncated. The passage is informed by ahope that science will provide the means for fuller human under-standing, even if it is not quite the religion to supplant all varietiesof Protestant and Catholic and Dissenter. But the narrator seemsmore intent on invoking science to urge present tolerance, thanon asserting the power of science to predict, let alone provide"the ascertainment of a unity which shall bind the smallest thingswith the greatest". Such an attempt may fail: in Middlemarch,

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both Lydgate in his search for primitive tissue, and Casaubonin his search for the Key to All Mythologies, seek a unity, whichthey each fail to find, though for different reasons.

The Mill on the Floss certainly does present suffering, thoughthe extent to which this suffering - in Maggie's case, say-can be seen to have epic and tragic dimensions might be chal-lenged. The problem is not that of the reader being persuadedthat there were potentials in Maggie which might have beenrealized had things been different, but that there were particularcauses, related to "the onward tendency of human things", whichprevent her fulfilment. It seems to me that in this section, GeorgeEliot pronounces moral truths, but relies on "wisdom" ratherthan argument to exact agreement. The "wisdom", as IsobelArmstrong allows, sometimes deflects us from rigorous analysisof its portent.

The effect of Book Fourth, chapter i is principally a resultof emotional rather than logical factors. It is a relief to leavethe desperation of the curse in the Tulliver family Bible whichconcludes Book Third to join the reflections about the Rhone,with its homely ruins, and the Rhine, with its romantic ones,which open Book Fourth. The very presence of rivers signalsa "compare and contrast" with the Floss and the Ripple, andby this stage the symbolic potency of the river is already wellestablished in the novel. Of course, George Eliot is permittingus only temporary and illusory relief, for the chapter is itself ademonstration of its theme, of the importance of attaining "alarge vision of relations", which here specifically involves anability to read both the vulgar and romantic vestiges of the pastas partial histories of similar lives.

Nevertheless, it is a relief to regard the Tullivers and Dodsonsfrom a greater distance, and in a different perspective. It isnoteworthy that the form of The Mill on the Floss is narrowand intense: George Eliot does not use a double plot andcontrasting settings as she had done in Adam Bede and wasto do in all her subsequent major fiction. Perspective has tobe as it were imported, as here, by a geographical shift; or,more frequently, by a literary reference - romantic literature isparticularly applicable, as in Maggie's reading of Scott -- or,especially in Book Sixth, by the use of musical allusion. Sucha focus intensifies the reader's awareness of the protagonists'psychological and moral plight, but places an additional burdenon the authorial commentary which registers the characters in

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a wider perspective and "a large vision of relations". In thecontext, the narrator's compassionate delineation of the narrow-ness of the Dodsons and Tullivers is more convincing than theattempts to conjecture about causes of and cures for the narrow-ness. And part of the context, of course, is the carefully establishedassociation of the narrator with the St Ogg's world, whichsomewhat hampers his discourse in less restricted areas.

Thus the application of scientific method directly to theDodsons and Tullivers is useless. "Certainly the religious andmoral ideas of the Dodsons and Tullivers were of too specifica kind to be arrived at deductively, from the statement that theywere part of the Protestant population of Great Britain." (II, 151.)The passage which follows inexorably and compassionately givesthe Dodsons their due, showing the logic of their course andindicating the limitations of their logic: as in

The religion of the Dodsons consisted in revering whatever wascustomary and respectable: it was necessary to be baptised, else onecould not be buried in the churchyard, and to take the sacramentbefore death as a security against more dimly understood perils;but it was of equal necessity to have the proper pall-bearers andwell-cured hams at one's funeral, and to leave an unimpeachablewill. (II, 152.)

The reader, guided by the narrator, is however capable of invokinga more valid logic:

If such were the views of life on which the Dodsons and Tullivershad been reared in the praiseworthy past of Pitt and high prices,you will infer from what you already know concerning the stateof society in 8t Ogg's, that there had been no highly modifyinginfluence to act on them in their maturer life. It was still possible,even in that later time of anti-Catholic preaching, for people tohold many pagan ideas, and believe themselves good church-peoplenotwithstanding; so we need hardly feel any surprise at the factthat Mr TuIIiver, though a regular church-goer, recorded his vin-dictiveness on the fly-leaf of his Bible ... Certain seeds which arerequired to find a nidus for themselves under unfavourable circum-stances, have been supplied by nature with an apparatus of hooks,so that they will get a hold on very unreceptive surfaces. The spiritualseed which had been scattered over Mr TuIIiver had apparently beendestitute of any corresponding provision, and had slipped off to thewinds again, from a total absence of hooks. (II, 154-5.)

The effect of this whole chapter is mainly conditioned bythe circumstantial detail which requires tolerance for and restrainscondemnation of the Dodsons and Tullivers. I suspect too, thatthe feeling of moral enlargement thus engendered in the readerexercises a further restraint, on critical scrutiny of how this

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SYDNEY STUDIES

"single object" relates to the whole novel. What the chaptermainly tends to show is how the self-perpetuating Dodson worldhas itself defended against change. Progress is assumed by thenarrator to be inevitable, and suffering a part of progress - buthow progress or improvement can be possible, given the Dodsons,is not indicated. The emphasis is on the strain of "the onwardtendency of human things" against "this sense of oppressivenarrowness", rather than on the mechanisms of "the onwardtendency". Only some of "the mystery of the human lot" is tobe dispelled by the narrator.

And it is important to accord recognition to the human limitson the almost divine knowledge and power sometimes attributedto the omniscient author. I do not think the characterizationis fully developed in the novel,9 but nevertheless the narratorof The Mill on the Floss is depicted in terms of such personallimitations. His unspecified personal acquaintance with his char-acters goes along with an interest in the writing of history, andissues in a concern both with individual histories and with theirrepresentative significance. How to communicate the data andevaluate it are central problems, and part of what George Eliotis presenting is the difficulty, even the intractableness, of theproblem she delineates and animates.

9 I am inclined to speculate that the fullest presentation of the kindof character sketched as the narrator of The Mill is TheophrastusSuch, George Eliot's persona in Impressions of Theophrastus Such(1879): see especially the essay "Looking Backward".

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